Take the Pill
by wingsontheroad
Summary: Medical practitioner Doctor Hopper prescribes Mr. Gold some anti depressants after an incident that left him suffering from traumatic amnesia. He is disorientated after being unable to recall anything about life in Storybrooke and is led to believe that Belle is a cruel hallucination brought on due to side effects caused by his new pills. Oneshot.


**A.N:**  
_This was an idea of/prompt from ourloveoverhealing via Tumblr._  
_The original prompt also included Bae, but I got so caught up in the RumBelle side of things that I couldn't comfortably find a place for him._  
_Another story another time perhaps! I haven't written anything in such a long time. You have certainly helped me get back in the way of things. _  
_Thank you for your lovely idea, and I hope it meets your expectations~!  
And to everyone else, I implore you to leave me a review. I have no concept of how my writing fares after so long in being absent from it.  
v-v ~awkward anticipation~_

_**Warning: Mentions of self harm and suicide.**_

_-__**  
**__  
_He took another pill and sat at his table. She was watching him again.

She was always there. In his house. In his head. Her image bleeding into reality.

It had been this way since the incident that occurred a few months ago.  
The one where he had found himself awoken in this new land, finding himself confined in a place of medicine. Doctors had fussed over him. He would have batted them away like insects if disorientation hadn't left him reeling. Doctor Hopper had treated him. It had been apparent that he was the only one brave enough to see to him.

People seemed to know him here, but they were distant. It was clear that the people in this place had already had some kind of previous interaction with him- not that he had any recollection.  
When he had walked out of the facility for the first time, those on the streets met his eyes with uneasy gazes before promptly turning their heads towards the pavement, pace quickening. This would have amused him under other circumstances, but this place was irregular. His magic felt wrong beneath his skin, and he quickly learnt that it wouldn't come forth at his will. Even his flesh had returned to a more natural tone.  
He felt his only crutch had suddenly been ripped from him. Every weak emotion that had been associated with humanity for hundreds upon hundreds of years started flooding him with a vengeance. He was used to having all the best cards in his hands, but now, now he was on his knees in a place he knew nothing of.  
"Traumatic Amnesia" the Doctor had said.

He'd been told the conditions of his misfortune were caused by a fallen power pole that had been struck by lightning during a storm the night he was found. The wood and its electric cable had collapsed as he had been exiting his shop.  
"Wrong place, wrong time"  
He was told that it was amazing he survived.  
In another place, at another time, he may have laughed at the possibility of being struck down by a mere burst of electricity, but this place sobered him. Mocking laughter didn't fill his throat as it may have done previously. He knew was in a less than ideal situation, and he wasn't a fool enough to ignore it.

The last thing he could remember clearly was the Queens visit to The Dark Castle.  
The way she'd casually smashed his world into tiny pointed shards while sipping the tea he hadn't offered. She spoke of Belle's fate as if she were retelling mere gossip from the village stalls.

Lovely Belle. Kind Belle. Beautiful Belle. His Belle. Belle who had reminded him that he had a beating heart hiding beneath the thick skin he wore over his bones.  
The brilliant woman who curtsied at a monster and held an inextinguishable light in her eyes .  
His Belle who was naive enough to think she could save a sorcerer from his very own blackened soul.  
In turn she had perished. He may as well have slaughtered her himself for all the blame that lay on his shoulders. He had done so much wrong by her.  
The weight of every detail pressed down on him.

He wondered often what her last memories of him were. The way he'd pushed her aside, took her by her arms and shook her like no man should ever touch a woman? Or perhaps she remembered how he'd thrown her to the rocky floor of her cell? Maybe she thought of his lies, how he'd told her he didn't want her, and sent her away. To her death. Maybe she believed it wasn't a lie at all?  
It was all at the very forefront of his head.

And he was left with no power to ward off the nightmares, no controllable magic to dull his weaker senses of pain or loss.  
He was plagued with awful remembrance.

After some careful consideration, Hopper had prescribed him with what he had called "Anti Depressants" to help with the very few physical symptoms that had leaked through from his emotional well being. Begrudgingly, he had accepted, knowing full well that without one crutch to lean on, he would be in dire need of another.  
He was promptly provided with a lengthy list of side effects for him to read.  
One pill a day, no more, no less.

There was nothing that could be done for his memory, or nightmares, but they could only hope that something would trigger him into remembrance of the details he was missing. Or at least hold hope that his mind would come back on its own in due time, if nothing else.  
He had no emergency contacts in this place. No one to call in a "bad situation".  
Though, if he knew himself, he knew that the field for who to contact in troublesome circumstances was most likely left blank on purpose.

Hopper didn't seem surprised at the lack of number or address for a secondary contact. Again, an indication of his less than pleasant personality. He'd been kept in a hospital bed for the first 3 days before he was released.

Within the first day or two he had often lapsed in and out consciousness.  
And then she started appearing. A side effect, as he would later learn.  
Sometimes his mind wandered into a cruel half reality where her porcelain face was painted with worry above his head, whispering, reassuring him. Sometimes disorientation took his soul to a place where he felt her stroke his brow or kiss his hand. Every time he had sat up in a more aware type of wakefulness, she was gone, thus leaving him with an empty, tight feeling inside himself.

By the third day he was sure that he was in fact utterly alone aside from the wary eyes of doctors scanning him in passing.  
He despised that his own mind acted against him in such a merciless fashion, to show him her, no matter how false or brief.  
It was on the third day of his stay that he had also learnt that in this place people addressed him by the name "Mr Gold". It seemed like a bad joke at the Spinners expense.

The Doctor had returned to him any of his belongings that were discovered with him the night he was found. It wasn't much.  
Two keys on a single circular hook. They read "home" and "shop". Those along with an elegant cane that looked untouched by the incident that had found himself in a less than fortunate condition. Funny how his cane came out unscathed, yet his own body suffered as it did. That after hundreds of years of forgetting how such physical mishaps felt.  
The Doctor also afforded him the courtesy of writing his home address on a piece of paper so he could find his way, along with the address of the shop he supposedly owned.  
Thereafter he was left to his own devices.

Once finding his home in this bizarre new place, he had taken out his slightly charred key and inserted it inside the lock.  
It was a far cry from his imposing castle in his home realm. Instead, while admittedly it was larger and seemingly more elaborate than the other houses he'd passed by, it was lacking. Not the same. It was difficult to imagine that he'd made a home within its walls.

As to be expected however, the door opened with a soft click. He had barely paid any notice to the rest of his surroundings when he entered through the front door. He could have cared less. He instead wearily toed the stairs, discovered his sleeping chambers, and made to lay on his back.

His action was met by the brief disturbance of an uncomfortable bulge in his jacket pocket. He had carefully removed the orange bottle from his inside pocket and given a brief shake to the pills, rolling the fairly sized tube shape in his fingers thoughtfully.  
He remembered the list he'd been given along with the promise of drugs, and while it had seemed a tedious waste of time at the moment he received it, in the light of his first few troubled nights in the hospital, he found himself removing it from his person and scanning over the small, narrow, print with his tired eyes.

Therein, in the very first few lines of the fine print, he had found the chilling explanation for how the image of his lost lady had echoed into his blurry mix of reality while he was incapacitated.

_"Hallucinations"  
_  
His eyes closed, the realization of what this meant seeping into a deeper thought process. Blearily he had wondered if it occurred solely due to a moment of pure weakness, or if it was an ailment that meant to torture him further. A crease between his eyes formed as he contemplated where this could take him. Just catching a glimpse of her while in a non coherent state was enough to make his thoughts run rapid and for his heart to squeeze painfully. For the first moment in hundreds of years, he felt true fear.  
It worrisome. And it made him feel, human.  
Along with it came, cowardice. He remembered that one well.  
With that thought, the darkness shrouded his thoughts and he fell into a troubled dreamless sleep.

He had awoken during the night, cloudy eyed and still sore. He attempted to turn to the other side of his pillow longing to once again be engulfed in the mercy of thoughtless slumber.  
A weight held him down. Warm, soft.

An alien presence he couldn't recall being there before pressing gently against his chest. He turned his head, confused, half lidded, and found himself with a face full of luscious brown chestnut curls, rosy cheeks. It took milliseconds for his eyes to snap open. Less than that for him to scramble out of bed. Her.

Anguish had seeped into every corner of his face in that moment as he had gazed down, shoulders heaving as he tried to gasp for the air that eluded him. It was one thing for her to look upon him in the unshielded moments of sleep and wakefulness, it was another for her body to be by him. Her soft, delicate body, bundled against him, breathing into the hollows of his neck.  
The small shadowed shape that had been so affectionately pressed into him shuffled a little and whimpered at the loss of him from her side .That doll of a woman that was every bit the image of the lady he would have taken as his own.  
He stumbled backwards until he hit the door frame, and had ripped his body from the room, knocking over trinkets from the dresser on his way passed. The illusion of his dear lady had remained an outline on the bed asleep as if she were as real as he. His heartstrings had bled inside his chest.

The vision of her in his bed was a mockery. A taunting image of what could have been.  
He had gone downstairs, tore open the glass door leading to garden, and knelt on the cold stone slabs.  
He was choking on the very air he breathed. Seeing her there like that destroyed him. The memory of her company, his loss, her fate, it seemed like yesterday to him.

The memory of her words to him resounded in his head like an echo.  
_"You could have had happiness."_

And it continued to echo on. Day after day, after day, after day. A bitter reminder of his own foolishness.

It was the beginning of a pattern that formed into months.

He had wept freely into the ground that night, and left nail marks scratching along the previously unscathed stone until his fingers became raw and bloodied. It seemed that this was indeed going to haunt him.  
If he were honest, he expected no less.

She seemed to never leave, this illusion of the woman he'd lost. She fueled his nightmares that caused him to sweat in the night, and whimper in his sleep. She equally fueled his dreams, which tormented him to near the same extent.  
Sometimes she would wander out as if she had duties to attend to, as if she had a life to live.  
His mind toyed with him constantly, trying to get him to give into the insanity of loving a lifeless woman who was far out of his reach.

But she would always return. She would fill the air with her humming. She would come to him with chatter. She would talk about her work in the library, the books she'd read. She'd come to his bed.

He was a terrible man.  
It only seemed fitting that his mind inflicted a terrible curse on him. To show him one of the only precious things he'd ever allowed his rotting heart to spare a beat towards.

And she was watching him again now.

Her body standing awkwardly in the doorway as he sat at his kitchen table with the little white tablet. He knocked it back quickly, without the help of water. He stared straight ahead, hardly daring to move. He knew she was there but it didn't mean that he didn't do his utmost to keep his ghosts out if he could help it.

Alas, it was not to be.

"Rumplestiltskin," her voice broke the silence. Smooth, slightly drawn out in soft hesitation.

He could almost sigh for the way she uttered his name in a place where no one knew of it but he. More proof that she was a mere figment of wishful thinking.

Every time she requested a response from him it merely drew out the same tortured lines. The same desperate pleadings. A vicious circle that brought nothing but pain. He clutched his hand into a fist as if it would give him an extra dose of strength to keep his mind distracted.

She kneeled next to him. Her hair tickling against his leg.

"Rumplestiltskin." she whispered this time, pausing for the longest of moments, giving him time to crumble as he sometimes did.  
He wouldn't, not this time. Things had been getting worse.  
To surrender now would make for the last time he did anything.

Once it was clear she would receive no reply, her hands found his hair instead, fingers twisting through the strands soothingly.  
This was something she would always do in light of his refusals. She would comfort him. Look at him with her doe eyes.  
Sometimes he would give in and shut his lids, embrace for the briefest of moments the insanity that plagued him. Often that earned him a contented smile upon her face. Then there were more tedious times where his reactions consisted of screams of loss and despair, rage, embracing the full extent of his insanity.  
Other times he broke, the man in him couldn't bare the suffering, so he would simply weep quietly into his palms.  
And life had no deals to offer him.

The majority of the time however, he would sit motionless, unsure of how he could continue.

She would throw him looks of affection that he didn't deserve while she was alive, much less from an illusion of her now she was far from his reach. Other times her eyes would fill with sadness when he insisted on maintaining a stony composure.  
He would catch a wounded look on her face the times he would leave her standing mid sentence in a fruitless effort to get away.  
None of it was easy. And he was so, so, very, tired.

She began humming to him as her fingers brushed against his face while she rolled strands of his hair in her fingers. He felt the notes from her throat vibrate through him.

"Belle" he finally choked out, fighting to keep the single word from dissolving into a quivering mess of noise.  
It was a half whisper, half a gasp. His eyes remained closed, he couldn't bare to look upon her, choosing instead to release some of his burden on this woman.

"I would have found you," he uttered.  
"If I had known." his voice was gruff, barely able to be heard, but he knew that this illusion of his love would hang upon every word that fell from his lips.

He could almost smell her rosy scent in the air. Like she was real. Yet another cruel trick.

"My clever girl, you knew me more than I."  
"A liar, a coward..."

He reached up to grasp her fingers in his own, too far gone to care if what he grasped was mere air.  
He rambled like a tortured man. He was one, there was no denying.

It was the same conversation. All the time. Every time.  
It was the same muttering of apologies. Broken sentences. The same admittance of everything he did wrong by her.  
And this imaginary woman would take her form and try and convince him that he could still be happy.  
Could still be fixed. Could still be loved.

"I'm still here." Her hand touched his face. Her fingertips trailed down his cheek and feathered across his jaw line.  
He looked into her eyes and could almost swear she was truly by him.

"It's my fault…", his voice came out hoarse, " if I hadn't cast you out...lied."

She hushed him pressing herself further into him, arms encircling his body as if trying to protect the monster from destroying itself from the inside. A wicked laugh formed in this throat, but he kept it down.

_It was too late. Too late. Too late._

His heart ripped painfully as he croaked out, "Coward."  
The comment was a final one. Directed at himself. Loathing dripping from the accusation.  
There was nothing else to say after that. It was clear that that would be all for the day.  
No more humming either. The air was heavy with regret.

He could stop taking the pills.  
The thought had occurred to him several times over for how he suffered with them. He would admit the visions he saw of her were a painful drug he was addicted to. The pills themselves caused him more harm than it ever had good. Even so, they'd brought her back to him in a false form, and no matter how he collapsed under the emotions it brought to the surface, he could never throw anything of her away. Not again.  
He met each day feeling like a burning fire raged wild in his veins, growing, spreading. He'd never cast her out again. Never again. Not even an image which was nothing more than a lie. The illusions would act as a reminder.  
And she never deserved to be forgotten, .

Her eyes had glazed over with unfallen tears by time he glanced her way again.

"Remember me," she pleaded, " Please remember us." she brought his hand to her mouth pressing her pink lips neatly against his palm.

"You are the reason I'm here. You've kept me safe here. You have protected me. I found you."  
Her hands were on his shoulders as if she meant to shake him. Their eyes met. Hers blazed with emotions far beyond his complete understanding, but he noticed defiance burning brightly. Defying the odds. Never giving up.  
Wet drops hung from her lashes but she held the same fire as she did when she lived.  
He'd always remember that look of flames in her eyes. So passionate.

"You have loved me, Rumplestiltskin." She looked almost as tortured as he felt, but of course, she was a figment of a suffering mind, how else would she look? No, she would tell him anything he'd want to hear.

He watched the first of her tears fall and felt his insides clench. Even if she was a hallucination, he couldn't see her face in such a state of misery. Her face was still the face of his Belle. His dear, lost Belle.  
He extended his hand to press his palm against her face. His fingers taking a small pleasure of feeling silken skin beneath his touch, hating himself for it. He heard her sharp intake of breath as he did so. Their faces were too close.  
It reminded him of when she kissed him. The way he manhandled her and locked her away for it.

It was agony now to touch her when she touched him. Agony when he gave in and touched her. Agony to feel that she was here, but to know from the inside that she wasn't.

"Please remember me. " she pressed her forehead against his.

He began pulling away. It was too much. The distress he felt was nothing less than dizzying, it made him weak.  
Weaker.

Her voice became more frantic as he began putting distance between them, but he couldn't hear her anymore. His ears were ringing.

He stood up and kicked the chair away from him, and exited the room.

He had sat in his bedroom for an hour, perched on the edge of his bed.  
The most intolerable part of his sickness was the fact that he couldn't escape the illusions.  
If he walked away he could still hear her. Pots would clang. Sometimes he'd hear her smooth humming, which often lulled him into a sleep of sweet dreams that only served to cause him misery when he awoke. More often however, he heard her weep.  
Especially on the days he extended his words to her, however little. It never ended well.

He had listened to her sob heavily in the kitchen for almost 30 minutes after he retreated. He imagined that when she wept it was his minds way of screaming.

His eyes glanced at his bedside clock and his gaze met at the space where he'd set down his pills. He stared at the space for several moments, his face creasing slightly. His hand shook towards them and he clicked open the little white lid. Plenty left.

He sighed as he popped another pill in his mouth.  
He let out a breath of relief, not that he felt different, but rather to know that he had crossed the line which he had previously toed so carefully over the last few months. One a day. One a day. One a day. Every day.  
_One too much is one too many._  
The wave of relief merely came from feeling a spec of control back in his arena. In the tiny, impulsive action, he had broken a chain of some sort.

Yes, could stop taking the pills, but he wouldn't. Not when it meant losing her.  
Losing himself was a much more agreeable alternative, he realized.

It was true, he was still a coward.  
A coward who had been living for the last few months in a hollow haze of misery.  
And an escape rope that stemmed from the little orange bottle held in his fingers was being dangled in front of him. It wasn't the first time he'd thought of grabbing it. How could he not when all he heard was their seductive slight clicking whenever he moved?  
Today was different, today was the first time that the seeds of bitter thought had begun to grow itself into will. Wonderful will.  
He was faced with brilliant clarity, something that he had thought had long left him along with the rest of his mind.

He glanced at the ceiling and a small breath of his old laughter, though very slight, sighed out from his lips. Slipping his pills back inside his jacket, he raised himself from his bed and made his way into the hall way, stopping at the top of the stairs only to open a small wooden cabinet on the landing. He brought out a small crystal glass and a bottle of whiskey that was still full for the most part.  
He didn't tend to indulge.

He proceeded downstairs, quietly finding the sitting room and settled in his large leather chair. He poured a substantial amount of amber liquid into his glass, and a sense of calm washed over him for the first time in the longest while as he began laying his pills out one by one on his legs in careful lines. He was slow and deliberate.

He plucked the first pill off his leg and placed it on his tongue, washing it down with his bitter drink.  
The first pill in this endeavor, he decided, was for his Belle.

He took another, for her eyes. Another for her weeping. Another for her pain. Another for locking her up.  
Another for pushing her to her knees when she'd only showed him softness. Another for the taste of her lips. Her rosy scent.  
Her delicate concern. The light in her eyes. Her laugh. The passion in her voice.  
She'd cried for him.  
He took half a dozen for how he'd wanted her, how he'd have taken her, how he'd cast her away, shut her out.  
His jaw trembled.

He took another for her blood, her death, her misery, her heartache, her strength.  
He took another for the power he hoarded.  
Another for fear.  
_  
_They could have lived in comfort with one another. He could have kept her. She would have filled his world with unimaginable light. Had her warm body with him in the nights. Embraced her in the days. Loved her. His Belle.  
_Coward. Disgusting coward that he was.  
_Another pill. Just because.  
One left.

He heard a small cautious shuffle in the door way. He didn't need to look round, he knew it was her.  
There was no point in resisting at this stage. He held out his hand, "Come."

She let her fingers shyly touch his but kept her head down in avoidance. Her eyes were red and swollen looking from their previous encounter in the kitchen. He gave her a weak smile as he popped the last pill in his mouth and he made to stand up. His movements were slower than they had been a few minutes previously.

" Didn't you already take your medicine?" she ventured as he shifted his body in order to stand close behind her. Her sadness turned quickly to concern, both at his rapid change of mood from their earlier encounter and the fact that she'd seen one too many white tablets slip into his mouth that day.

"Not to worry dearie, a small adjustment." he waved away her worries and moved one hand in front of her dragging her back into his chest. The action did little to appease the frown on her face.

He stood for a few minutes swaying with her in silence, disorientation creeping in as his eyes became more than a little unfocused.  
He buried his face in her neck as he clung to her, just as much to keep himself on his feet as he did it for the sake of feeling a last few moments of comfort with this illusion of his love. Her image was acceptable for this purpose, he wouldn't have wanted his lady to bare witness to such an escape, even if she were alive.

Feeling his weight increase to an uncomfortable point she turned in his arms and reached for his face, confused scowl dissolving swiftly into a picture of terror. His grip on her loosened and he allowed himself to fall to his knees.  
She scrambled to lighten his body's fall to the wooden floor. His eyes were closed, though still barely aware of her panicked voice.  
He felt her hands on his face. On his body. Searching for an answer. Something, anything, to stop what was happening.  
Wet drops were leaking outwards from his lids, the corners of his lips had loosened into a contented smile.

"What did you do," her voice peaked reaching a hysterical level, "What have you done?!"  
"Wake up!" He felt her shake his shoulders firmly and let out a slight groan of discontent.  
She left his side momentarily, her footsteps pacing the room searchingly. There was a few seconds of silence, soon shattered by her startled words in tones of protest, hurt, anger, fear. Plastic hit the floor. She had found the empty bottle. And now she knew.

He heard her pick up the phone and near yell into the speaker.  
It was his brains way of accepting that it was shutting down, he thought.  
The fact that his illusions would become aggressive in its realizations made sense, though it was not as peaceful a passing as he had hoped.

Breathing was difficult now, he seemed to need to make a conscious effort to make his lungs inflate and deflate, his heart beat at an uncomfortable rate. His imaginary love who had slammed down the dialler appeased that she'd called for help, stopped pacing and had collapsed against his chest, her hands were on him. No one would come, he knew.

He found the strength to raise his arm and thread his fingers through her long, beautiful, hair that so resembled the woman he had lost.

He took a gulp of air and raised her chin so he could peer into her eyes, " I have a hope that what ever happens hereafter, that another life may allow me the mercy of finding you again, in another time."

His voice was hoarse, weak, and deteriorating. Her eyes had filled and now wet drops were leaking steadily onto him.

"Had I not been a fool I'd have told you how I care while you still lived."  
"I am living now," she protested weakly, "why can't you trust me?"  
"Ah," he exhaled and closed his lids again, "but who can trust a ghost?"  
"I'm not a ghost", she clutched his face in her hands and pushed her lips down on his.

He felt himself give in for a few brief moments, his mouth barely moving for the effort it afforded him to do so. She pulled back and looked down at his face searchingly stroking his hair back.

A desperate note hitched in her voice, "How can I be a ghost in your eyes, how can a ghost kiss you, how can a ghost hold you, how can a ghost cry for you?" she clutched his shirt in her fists longing to shake him into sense as she fought the urge to give into the flood of weeping that bubbled on beneath her surface, but she thought better of it.

"Some of the things the mind is capable of doing to itself surpasses even the blackest of curses, my dear." he sighed, "But dreams are not flesh."

She threw his arm from her as she stood causing him to peer up at her in question.  
She made for the kitchen and he heard her rattle around searchingly.  
She returned with a blade in her hand, a fact that would have made him arch his eyebrow in a questioning motion if he'd had the energy left to do so. She knelt by him and held her hand to his face. His eyes narrowed seeing the pointed end of its blade meet her skin, it was too late to protest, and he hadn't the energy to raise an arm to stop it. It was all he could do to keep his eyes cracked open.

She pressed some of the crimson fluid to his lips and he registered the dark metallic taste of blood. Blood. He tasted blood.  
She was openly weeping now, "Don't you leave me, not now." In the distance he heard ambulance sirens.  
"I'm real, I'm here. I'm here and we're going to be together."  
She smoothed his hair back and touched his face trying to keep him focused on her.

The heart that was already drumming uncomfortably in his ears was much louder now, panicked. Loud, and terrified.  
He wanted to snap out of his drug induced haze and reach for her but he was fading. But it was her.  
"My Belle..." the words barely escaped from his mouth.

His Belle. His Belle was by him now and he was dying. Leaving her. Leaving a reality he had wasted. Disbelieved in.  
He could do nothing to stop it.

Slow tears crept from his eyes as he summoned the rest of his strength to capture her bleeding hand in his own shaking fingers. He brought it to his lips and kissed it as he closed his eyes for what he was sure was the final time and lost himself to the dark.

"I love you" , her voice had become as hoarse as his had been.  
She put her body over his and clung as if clinging would keep him to the present world, mumbling the same words over and over into his neck.

The door slammed open, paramedics led by Doctor Hopper swarmed into the room. She looked up into the Doctors face seeking some kind of reassurance as they lifted him onto a stretcher and led "Mr Gold" away from her. Hopper picked up the little orange bottle from the floor once he spied it and examined it uncomfortably in his hand.  
"We will do what we can, Miss", he tried to sound professional, but a tone of guilty personal responsibility seeped through.  
They followed the stretcher into the ambulance.

Once crammed inside the moving vehicle they hooked him up to their machines. His skin had paled into an unnatural colour. He'd become patchy and beads of sweat had formed all over his body. Belle kept herself in the furthest corner while they worked, clutching her shoulders caught between turning away from the scene and being unable to rip her eyes away.  
They shocked him once.  
Nothing.  
Twice.  
Nothing.  
A third time.  
A blur. It was all a terrible blur.

"Miss," her eyes shot up at being addressed.  
"I'm so sorry…" there was a pause, a sigh, "there's nothing more we can do for him."  
He offered her a hand but she stood numb.

The world drowned out around her and her eyes focused on the body of Rumplestiltskin.  
"Leave", she whispered. It may as well have been a scream, a command. The Doctor and medics scrambled out and left her alone. With him. She sat by his side and took his hand in hers.

Her breath shuddered and she didn't bother to wipe her face from the wetness that came. "You are a fool"  
"A fool for disbelieving so much that you could be afforded one instance of happiness that you had to convince yourself that it wasn't real." , she moved her hand to his cheek, "A fool that you felt this was the only way you could be free."

"I forgive you, because life hasn't given you much reason to believe otherwise, I think." Her eyelashes were low.  
She lifted his hand and she pressed it against her face and closed her eyes. Still warm. She could almost believe-

His fingers twitched. It was a minuscule movement but she felt it.

She snapped into awareness and almost fell backwards to find golden orbs peering into her own.  
His hand circled her wrist keeping her upright.  
"You can't get rid of me that easily, my dear", his low voice chuckled.  
His skin was tainted the same green and gold that she remembered from her days with him in The Dark Castle.

Her legs were weak, she trembled, "How?"  
"There are few ways to kill me dearie", he made to pull her closer until she sat by him on the bed.  
"You knew you'd come back?", her voice quivered with a dizzying relief as she reached for him..  
"I did not." he stated with a slight frown, folding his arm around her shoulder possessively," What ailed me had left me feeling weaker than I ever did as a mere man. I did not believe that the power I had acquired transferred with me from that land to this. It felt irregular. Not strong. Not like this."

His fingers fondled her loose strands of hair.

"Do you remember, before your accident? Your castle?"  
"I remember it all", he added pointedly, "And that which I was ignorant of previously."  
Magic crackled deliciously through his veins and he inhaled in pleasure of how it felt surrounding him completely, "It appears that I have returned to my monstrous state, sweet." His mouth was twitched upwards into an equally delicious grin.

"You're no monster", she retorted.  
"You are too kind, my lady", he murmured, looking down at his lap with a face which spoke some level of humility.

Shyly she placed a peck at the corner of his mouth and then his cheek, a slight smile tugging at her mouth, his eyes glinted when she dared to meet them again.

"What caused you to change?", she asked cautiously , "I wouldn't have you any other way, I just wonder."

He let out a small hum before responding, "I'd venture a guess that my impending demise caused a spike in my magic where it had previously been subdued due to the atmosphere in this place. One could say it was sleeping as opposed to how it used to be. I cannot be sure. This isn't something I've encountered before."  
"I don't know how permanent this is. It may well be that pink flesh may not be a continuing feature on me now that my full potential has been rudely awakened." He waited for a sigh or look of disappointment.

She gave none.

"I'm sure that enough people here have dealt with you in the past that they shouldn't care how you look. Who are they to judge you when they take advantage of what you have to offer? The only difference between them and you is the fact that you bare the brunt of the both side effects, and the hatred and fear that comes with it. They get to go on their merry way. You are the one who suffers for it." Her tone was not such to be argued with and his eyes flashed confusion at her.

"So fascinating, little one, that you can feel what you do for me." his expression was soft , " I shant be so careless to toss you away again. Never again."

He tugged her into an embrace, his eyes misty as he leaned his chin on her head, "I fear that you have earned the heart of a most undesirable creature, my lady. Would you be willing take the heart of This One?"

She smiled up at him in a way that seemed to bare her soul ," Always."

She hid her face in the nook of his neck. He could feel her smile on his bare skin and felt his breath catch.

"It's forever, dearie", he poked, touching his index finger to the tip of her nose.  
"If you'll have me", she retaliated.  
"That I shall my lady", he replied .

He rose from the bed and pulled her with him, hand snaking around her waist.  
With a flick of his hand the ambulance doors slammed open to reveal a group of morbid looking paramedics stumble backwards as he emerged, seemingly having risen from the dead . He greeted them with a toothy grin, and one of his bizarre trademark giggles that reached up into his irregular golden eyes.

**A.N**

_Thank you for reading~!_  
_I'd also like to give a nod to the song "Take the Pill" by the wonderful Emilie Autumn. _  
_Title inspiration was had :3_

*Also I know I suck at layouts  
*Also there are probably mistakes dotted all over the place  
*Also omg.


End file.
